11/8/2011: In June the OUS board refused to sign off on a bond sale to fund the EMU expansions until the students agreed to the plans – in no small part because the plan requires students to pay $100 a quarter in increased fees, but hadn’t been consulted about what their money would buy. The UO administration was royally pissed, but VP Robin Holmes said
“I don’t anticipate this slowing us down,” Holmes said. “It’s okay to do the referendum and show we have student support and more forward with it.”
ASUO Pres Ben Eckstein set up the election for Nov. Then it seems the administration stopped talking to the student groups about the EMU design, and started putting in all sorts of things that sounded great to administrators (concert hall, pools, hot-tubs) but not the parts that sounded important to students. (Space for student groups.) Eckstein got tired of getting the run around, so he called their bluff and postponed the election. There will be a meeting today: (Tuesday, Nov 8) from 11-1 at the EMU Amphitheater.
UO Matters,
The Student Blog “UO Truth” is kicking butt. I tend to go there first you are now second in information on the UO.
http://uotruth.tumblr.com/
The concert hall a mistake. If the University thinks the students will want to fund this — I don’t know where all the money is supposed to come from — but if they think the students will want to pay for this, they are crazy.
I think they may overestimate the willingness of the students to pay for a new EMU, on top of rising tuition. They don’t seem to have grasped the enormity of the financial disaster that has struck people just starting out, or the rising resistance to tuition increases (however justified they may be according to recent norms).
There is a real possibility of a financial setback coming to the University, which will be left dumb if it happens. (Sorry, not sorry if saying such a thing is politically incorrect.)
I won’t even begin to talk about what a true world financial catastrophe would mean for the University.